After the Gulag: A History of Memory Russia's Far North

Using these previously unavailable personal records, alongside newspapers, photographs, interviews, and other non-state archival sources, sheds new light not only on how former prisoners experienced life after release but also how they laid the foundations for the future commemoration of Komi's dark past. Bound by a "camp brotherhood," they used informal social networks to provide mutual support amid state and societal oppression. Decades later, they sought rehabilitation with the help of the newly formed Memorial Society—the civic organization largely responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union. In sharing their life stories and family archives with Memorial, they sustained an alternate history of the Soviet Union.Offering an unprecedented look at the legacies of mass repression under Stalin, explores how ordinary political prisoners from across the Soviet Union navigated life after release, using memoirs, letters, and art to translate their experiences and shape the politics of memory in post-Soviet Russia.